First I'll give you a little background information on me and how I got started smoking. It was peer pressure. All my friends were smoking and I thought it was the cool thing to do. And boy was I right! In all seriousness though, I became a KCBS certified BBQ judge 3 years ago and once I got the taste for the Q, I knew I had to try to make it myself. So the research started by reading online reviews and chatting with fellow Q judges. Since I was new to this and didn't know how much tinme or money I wanted to commit I narrowed down my decision to the Masterbuilt Electric and the Weber Smokey Mountain.
The Weber Smokey Mountain gets outstanding reviews and I've even seen teams use these in competition. While I've never used one, I've been told that they are fairly easy to use as well. I have a Weber grill and think that they make an excellent product.
So now onto the Masterbuilt. It's an electric smoker so the heat source is an electric coil wire thing. It sits under a firebox and heats the wood chips. You plug it in (outside only) and set the temp, time and go. Reminds me of that infomercial with the Set it and forget guy. Ron Popeel i think. And here he is.
That dude cracks me up and where do they find those audience members! Ok, enough about Ron and his magic oven. You're here to read about smokers, not jokers.
The Masterbuilt is fairly easy to set up and it regulates the temperature well. This was one of my major deciding factors in going with the Masterbuilt. I didn't want have to sit with the smoker and monitor the temp. The BBQ purists will say it's not real Q and the KCBS (Kansas City BBQ Society) will not let you compete with an electric smoker. But I'm just a guy with a backyard looking for an easy way to smoke my meat.
And here's some of my BBQ made with the Masterbuilt.
So if you're interested in smoking and don't want to spend a bunch of money or dedicate a weekend to cooking, then I highly recommend the Masterbuilt electric.
